As of Thursday, however, Denmark is no longer a valid comparison. The Danish National Bank has announced that, with effect from Friday, it will raise its deposit rate by 15 basis points to 0.05 per cent (it had already increased it to -0.10 per cent in January). Meanwhile, the central bankers in Copenhagen left the lending and the discount rate unchanged at 0.2 and 0 per cent respectively. Read more

When confidence is shot, policy must get ahead of the curve if it is to count. Do less than markets expect, and there is a decent chance that measures will have the opposite impact to what policymakers were hoping for.

Minutes of the Riksbank’s July 4 policy meeting, published today, see deputy governor Lars Nyberg become the latest central banker to lambast the eurozone authorities over their handling of the Greek crisis. From the minutes:

Economically it would have paid off to find a solution to the Greek crisis a long time ago, given the costs in the form of less efficient markets and falling stock markets that the uncertainty has led to. However, Greece is now part of the euro area and this means that the crisis must be resolved politically and at the European level. Mr Nyberg noted that the European mechanisms for resolving crises do not appear to work particularly well.

Financial market investors are wondering, and justifiably so, how a crisis in a larger country could possibly be managed if it is not even possible to reach agreement on how to deal with Greece.

Quite. Because of this, he says, “a relatively minor economic crisis may quickly become a major political crisis”. (Note that this was before events in Italy took a turn for the worse.) Read more

Irish pluck and entrepreneurship remain undiminished by the country’s banking and economic crisis. John Bruton, the former Taoiseach (prime minister), was in Frankfurt today as ambassador for Ireland’s international financial services industry, arguing the case for its future growth.

The idea might send a chill down the spines of some in Frankfurt, including at the European Central Bank. Ireland has been the source of some of the biggest banking disasters to face the eurozone, including at branches of German banks. Read more

The European Central Bank has emerged from the financial crisis as one of the few institutions with its reputation intact – and its powers greatly enhanced – so a job on its governing council is a pretty good gig by any measure.

One is coming up in June, when Austrian economist Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell is leaving after eight years at the top table. Two candidates have been put forward to replace her: Peter Praet, 61, a well-regarded director of the Belgian central bank for the past decade; and Elena Kohutikova, 57, a former Slovak national bank deputy governor and now an economist at Vseobecna Uverova Banka, a unit of Italy’s Intesa SanPaolo. A decision is expected at the next meeting of Finance ministers on 15th February.

One factor that could prove decisive is that Ms Tumpel-Gugerel is currently the only woman at the top of the ECB. The EU also likes its institutions to be “geographically-balanced”, usually a code that all the top jobs shouldn’t just go to the bloc’s largest and oldest members. The five remaining directors at the ECB hail from France, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Italy – surely another edge for Ms Kohutikova. Read more

The euro surged higher on Thursday, hitting a one-month high against the Swiss franc after Jean-Claude Trichet, chairman of the European Central Bank, warned of inflationary risks in the eurozone.

Mr Trichet struck a hawkish tone after the central bank’s policy meeting – at which it left its main lending at 1 per cent – emphasising that the ECB was prepared to raise interest rates to keep prices stable. “Risks to the medium-term outlook for price developments are still broadly balanced, but could move to the upside,” he said. Read more

What has been the root cause of the eurozone’s difficulties? Athanasios Orphanides, Cyprus’s central bank governor, says European solidarity and the level of trust between the continent’s governments have been called into question. The correct response, he has just argued in a lecture at Frankfurt’s House of Finance, was to design systems of mutual support – or insurance policies – that would allow Europe’s monetary union to weather future economic and financial storms.

To some, especially in Germany, that might sound like offering rewards for poor fiscal behaviour and turning the eurozone into a “transfer” union in which taxpayers’ money flows from fiscally prudent countries to the profligate. But Mr Orphanides took the example of motor insurance. “Would banning all insurance be a sensible way to ensure individual responsibility?” he asked. Read more

Berlin’s approach – and that of the European Central Bank – to handling the eurozone crisis, has come under strong attack from Peter Bofinger, economics professor at Würzburg university and an independent adviser to the German government. Without a profound change of strategy there was a “major risk of an unraveling of the euro area,” he has said.

A “dangerous” adjustment process is being forced on eurozone countries, he told a Financial Times/Credit Suisse conference in Frankfurt. The weakest spot is Greece, which faces rising unemployment and debt levels. As a result, political opposition to euro membership would grow, according to Prof Bofinger. “Sooner or later we will have a discussion in Greece: ‘why not leave the euro?’” A new currency could then be devalued and much of the government’s debt cancelled out. Once Greece had left, others would follow. Read more

In the early days of the telephone, human operators played a crucial role: you called the operator, asked for the Joneses at a certain address, and she called them for you and connected you. Telephones were never forecast to be ubiquitous: their number would be forever constrained by the cost and availability of human operators required to make the system work.

Few people – if any – envisaged automatic connection. When it finally came along, no doubt it was unpopular with telephone operators. But the sacrifice of their jobs – painful as it was – paved the way for the highly efficient system we know today. It is unlikely the telephone operators were consulted on the matter, much less given the deciding vote.

So there is a level on which it seems strange that EU policymakers should get to choose whether or not they remain a part of the fiscal sanctions process. Euro member states might be punished if they are fiscally irresponsible, going forwards, but then again they might not: it will depend upon votes by policymakers. The ECB’s proposal for semi-automatic sanctions has been thwarted: the decision to punish will remain lengthy – and political.

A welcome piece of good news for Jean-Claude Trichet, European Central Bank president: Estonia is about to join the eurozone as its 17th member. The entry of the tiny Baltic state has significance beyond its shores. It shows that despite all the woes of the past year, Europe’s monetary union is still on an expansion course. Mr Trichet has just been speaking in Tallinn, the country’s capital, at an event kicking off the final preparations before January 1, 2011 when the euro becomes legal tender.

His comments covered the usual themes about Europe’s common destiny and the euro’s importance in the continent’s economic integration. But Mr Trichet did not speak as if Greece had never happened. There was a stern warning that future members had to do more that just meet the technical requirements for joining (although with hindsight, it is not even clear that Greece managed that).

Plans are afoot to foster local currency wholesale funding: by giving banks local currency credit, the theory goes, they will be able to pass local currency loans on to consumers. Doing this would reduce FX risks for homeowners, who earn in local currencies but often pay back debts in the euro or swiss franc. Read more

Slovakia’s refusal to back the Greek loan for Greece set a bad example, and the ECB should not support euro entry to applicants that may behave similarly, Reuters is reporting. (NB. We are unable to confirm these quotations, and the ECB, when asked, had no comment to make.)

BRATISLAVA/BRUSSELS, Sept 10 (Reuters) – Slovakia set a bad example by refusing support for a loan to Greece, and the European Central Bank will not support euro entry by others unless sure they will not take similar steps in the future, ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet was quoted as saying.

A memo from this week’s meeting of euro zone finance ministers, seen by Reuters, said Trichet was outraged at the refusal by Slovakia to participate in the Greek bailout.

Several EU officials said privately Slovakia could be snubbed by some of the 26 other EU member states because its decision is likely to complicate talks on the bloc’s budget, making the rich net payers less willing to grant aid to poorer countries.

“Trichet was outraged at the last Eurogroup by Slovakia’s refusal of a bilateral loan to Greece and said that had the ECB known Slovakia would behave like that, it would not have endorsed Slovakia’s euro adoption,” the memo summarising the discussion said.

The value of a Big Mac is everyhere equal: that’s the premiss of this index from the Economist. Using the burger price as an identity allows us to compare the relative value of countries’ currencies.

Norway comes out most overvalued versus the dollar; Argentina the least. In dollar terms, a Norwegian Big Mac is a meaty $7.20, almost double the American value ($3.73) and nearly four times the Argentinian price ($1.78). Read more

Compared with the past few monthly press conferences, Jean-Claude Trichet had a smooth ride today (maybe the sweltering heat in Frankfurt added to the slightly soporific atmosphere).

In Lisbon in May, the European Central Bank president faced awkward questions on the ECB’s concessions to Greece and just how it was reacting to fast-moving financial market conditions. This time the message was clearer: the ECB is on standby and keeping its emergency measures in place.

The main news was about additional offers of unlimited three-month liquidity, which will cover the period until the end of the year. On the controversial government bond purchases, there was no additional detail. Just as it would with foreign currency intervention, the ECB is maintaining an air of mystery. But there are other benefits from its policy of silence: those (in Germany) who worry about the inflation impact can hope there’s a good chance of programme being unwound, while those (everywhere else) who think the programme will have to be stepped up, can also keep their hopes alive.

Investors may wonder why the euro is not trading even lower given the almost universal bearish sentiment on the single currency. The answer could lie in Switzerland.

The Swiss National Bank shocked the market on Tuesday by announcing that, as a result of its intervention in the foreign exchange markets, its currency reserves leapt more than 50 per cent last month from $145.6bn in April to $261.9bn in May. Read more

Which reserve currencies are left for central bankers, concerned first about the dollar, and now the euro?

Peter Garnham, the FT’s currency correspondent, points out that the likely beneficiary of the more recent euro crisis has been the dollar, “simply because other destinations – Canada and Australia for example – are simply not large enough for them to use as significant diversification destinations.”

Will this dollar-euro ping-pong continue, and, even if it does, are the combined euro-dollar fortunes of the past two years meriting ever smaller reserve allocations? Read more

Evidence is growing that the European Central Bank sees the euro’s weakness positively. Christian Noyer, governor of the Banque de France – who always chooses his words carefully – has just told French TV that the currency is now trading at a “more normal” level. “Certainly, we are benefiting from it in terms of exports,” he added.

Earlier, Ewald Nowotny, Austria’s central bank governor, had told a news conference in Vienna that the euro’s fall would be welcomed by industry (although Mr Nowotny added: “We’ll have to see how long this development will be seen as acceptable by the US.”) Read more

… and the Aussie dollar is set to crash, relative to the greenback. This is the surprising implication of analysis from a former chief economist at Wamco.

Scott Grannis has essentially compared currency movements with the ‘true’ value of that currency. He’s done this by picking one exchange rate he considers fair, and then adjusting both currencies for inflation and working out the resulting exchange rate over time. Read more

The Money Supply team

Chris Giles has been the economics editor of the Financial Times since 2004. Based in London, he writes about international economic trends and the British economy. Before reporting economics for the Financial Times, he wrote editorials for the paper, reported for the BBC, worked as a regulator of the broadcasting industry and undertook research for the Institute for Fiscal Studies. RSS

Claire Jones is the FT's Eurozone economy correspondent, based in Frankfurt. Prior to this, she was an economics reporter in London. Before joining the Financial Times, she was the editor of the Central Banking journal. Claire studied philosophy and economics at the London School of Economics. RSS

Robin Harding is the FT's US economics editor, based in Washington. Prior to this, he was based in Tokyo, covering the Bank of Japan and Japan's technology sector, and in London as an economics leader writer. Robin studied economics at Cambridge and has a masters in economics from Hitotsubashi University, where he was a Monbusho scholar. Before joining the FT, Robin worked in asset management and banking. RSS

Sarah O’Connor is the FT’s economics correspondent in London. Before that, she was a Lex writer, covered the US economy from Washington and the Icelandic banking collapse from Reykjavik. Sarah studied Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge University and joined the FT in 2007. RSS

Ferdinando Giugliano is the FT's global economy news editor, based in London. Ferdinando holds a doctorate in economics from Oxford University, where he was also a lecturer, and has worked as a consultant for the Bank of Italy, the Economist Intelligence Unit and Oxera. He joined the FT in 2011 as a leader writer. RSS

Emily Cadman is an economics reporter at the FT, based in London. Prior to this, she worked as a data journalist and was head of interactive news at the Financial Times. She joined the FT in 2010, after working as a web editor at a variety of news organisations.
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Ralph Atkins, capital markets editor, has been writing for the Financial Times for more than 20 years following an economics degree from Cambridge. From 2004 to 2012, Ralph was Frankfurt bureau chief, watching the European Central Bank and eurozone economies. He has also worked in Bonn, Berlin, Jerusalem and Brussels. RSS

Ben McLannahan covers markets and economics for the FT from Tokyo, and before that he wrote Lex notes from London and Hong Kong. He studied English at Cambridge University and joined the FT in 2007, after stints at the Economist Group and Institutional Investor. RSS